Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was an American author best known for her novel Little Women. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she was educated by her father, the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, as well as by family friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She was a Union Army nurse in the Civil War and published sensationalist novels under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard before finding lasting success as a children’s author with Little Women and its three sequels.